FumeFX user errors

[Nathank]

Hello and greetings, this is my first post on the FumeFX forums. I would Like to begin by asking a few questions and describing a few of the errors that I encounter.
I have had FumeFX for over a year now, I haven't used it much, but I've always had it and played with it from time to time. Now that I am attending a visual FX school, I decided I should get to learn FumeFX in and out as it is a very powerful plugin. The first error that I encounter is when I render with Mental Ray, I get the
following error message: Error : Atmospheric "fusionWork Renderer is not supported.

This bugs me a lot and I'm sure it's something I'm doing. If anyone can help, that would be very appreciated.

Another problem that I'm having, is when I render at very high res settings, I get color banding. Again, this may be a renderer problem, but I do receive the same issues when I render with the default scanline renderer as well. My settings are like .63 spacing and quality 10 and Maximum iterations at 500. The color banding is kind of large, and the smoke and fire do not appear to have any detail whatsoever. If anyone can help me fix these issues, I will be very very grateful.

Sincerely Nathan.

[Jordan]

I think with MR you will always get that error. I believe you dont need the render effect turned on. You are still getting fume to render correct?

turn your quality back down to 3-5 and your iterations to 50-200. Settings that high will only slow the sim down. The spacing number by itself is usless, we need to know how many voxels the grid has (200x200x200?) You probably need more spacing! You can also try turning up the jitter in the render tab of fumeFX to mask the banding.

[Nathank]

Thank you for the response

I'm not at home at the moment so I cannot provide that information, however I did manage to solve the color banding issues. Under render I just turned the step size down and that seemed to fix it.
Also, I don't think I mentioned this before, but the main issue that I'm having is that I'm getting very cartoon-ish renders. I purchased the Alan Mckay advanced tutorials, and he puts a spotlight in his scene and his explosion renders out looking almost photoreal. I follow him exactly but my renders look cartoonish. Is this because he is using Vray and I'm using Mental Ray? I'm continuing to look for answers, and your help is very much appreciated.

Best Regards,
Nathan.

[Jordan]

maybe you dont have shadowing enabled properly.
I dont use MR much, but this will work in scanline and Vray fine:
Your lights should be standard spot lights using shadow maps. Make sure your lights have Atmospheric Shadowing turned on in the Shadow Parameters rollout of the light.
Add the lights to the fumeFX grid and make sure Cast Shadows and Receive shadows are turned on in the Smoke rollout of the Render tab. If the shadows look blocky you might need to turn up the shadow map size. I usually use 2048

[sitnisati]

Dear Nathan,

For mental ray rendering, FusionWorks in not needed at all, so you can disable it.
More realistic illumination can be achieved if you use built in multiple scattering.

Kresimir

[Nathank]

Pardon my absence, I've not been around a computer for the past week.
Unfortunately that's not it either.
Out of curiosity, are the results better with V-Ray? Or are they relatively similar?
Thank you for your responses.
Regards,
Nathan.

[sitnisati]

For now, only finalRender supports Skylight illumination.
http://www.afterworks.com/FumeFX/finalRender.asp?ID=20

Kresimir

[Nathank]

For now, only finalRender supports Skylight illumination.
http://www.afterworks.com/FumeFX/finalRender.asp?ID=20

Kresimir

Thank you for the reply, and sorry for my absence(Work and school kept me busy). I'm still receiving the same issues over and over. I'm using FumeFx 1.2 64bit on 3Ds Max 2011 64bit. Could that have anything to do with it?
I've included a render so that you can better understand what my issues are.
Best regards,
Nathan.

[Nathank]

The render that you see is WITH a light, with multiple scattering, and with shadows turned on. The sim was at 200x200x200 grid space.
Best regards,
Nathan.